Church & Ministry

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“I’m a member of the body of Christ. Why should I have to join a church?” In one form or another, this is one of the most common sentiments that I have heard in the past five years of ministry in Colorado Springs. A simple but profound part of the answer to that question can be given in one word—“love.”

It is no secret that American individualism has left its mark on the way we practice our Christianity, particularly with regard to the church. Some have gone so far as to say that American evangelicalism has no ecclesiology. In recent years a loose crowd has coalesced of those who not only tacitly accept churchless Christianity but explicitly promote it. From the vantage point of my little prairie dog mound surrounded by mountainous para-church ministries, it can almost appear that there are few left who believe that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is actually something tangible that has biblical shape and includes real commitments to real people. Many love the church like a young girl who has watched too many romantic movies—they are passionate about something that does not exist except in their own fevered imaginations.

In that context, the title of this recent book by John Crotts, a pastor at Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, Georgia, caught my attention, and I must say that reading it was refreshing. This is a book designed to woo the believer into loving the actual bride for whom Christ died. In Loving the Church, Pastor Crotts aims “to help you see how glorious God’s family really is, and then to see the countless ways you and your family can flourish within it” (p. 30). Crotts seeks to accomplish this with one section summarizing the Bible’s teaching about the church and a second section applying this teaching to Christians and their families.

The thread that holds the book together is a series of fictional coffee shop conversations among a diverse group of professing Christians who are disaffected with the church for various reasons. In between their encounters, Crotts lays out some simple and clear Scriptural teaching on the nature and function of the local church. With this approach, Crotts gives a gentle rebuke to some common errors regarding the church while maintaining a positive and encouraging tone. For example, he stirs up reflections about the relationship of families vis-à-vis the church, about ministering apart from the church, about moral failures and churches’ responses, and about choosing a church because of its use of technology or its singles’ group.

Originally published at SI April 28, 2008. Some details have been updated.

What makes some missionaries such attractive candidates for support?

In the ten years I’ve served as a pastor, our church has met and heard presentations by many missionaries. Accounts of how God led them to faith in Christ and stirred their interest in missions have been a highlight of church life for us. Judging by the lobby chatter afterwards, our congregation has been repeatedly amazed to discover God’s power at work in places where we had no idea anything was happening.

But missionaries who have come through our church seeking support have left widely differing impressions on us. Some left us eager to support them (as best we could) and keenly interested in finding a way to do so. Others left us with a sense of unease about them and their future.

No doubt some of this difference can be explained by personality factors. Not everyone is blessed with electrifying charisma, and not everyone has the kind of plainspoken friendliness that resonates with our congregation’s sensibilities. But it hasn’t always been the talented speakers or gregarious conversationalists who have ignited us; nor has it always been the missionaries with the most dramatic results to report.

Rather, several other factors have consistently made some support-seeking missionaries an exciting prospect in our eyes.